Invite the Big 3 English North East Sides into the Scottish Football League

Invite Newcastle United, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough into Scottish Soccer League.  

Plus Carlisle United, Hartlepool United and Gateshead.
Invite the Big 3 English North East Sides into the Scottish Football League

Increase the SPFL to 50 teams, with 6 clubs taken from Northern England, and two sides from the Scottish Non League system.

Then have a 20 team Premier, plus 3 divisions of ten below that.



Inviting the big 3 North East England sides into the Scottish Premier.

It would be beneficial for the 3 big clubs of North East England, it would grow Scottish Soccer, and would do not serious harm to English football.



Advantage for 3 North East England sides

-          Qualification for Europe, more often.

-          Chance to win trophies and reach finals more often. Sunderland have not won a national trophy since the seventies. Newcastle not since the fifties, and Middlesbrough have won one trophy in their history.

-          Guarantee of North East derbies every season.

-          Games against the Old Firm

-          Games in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.

Advantage for Scotland.

-          Scottish League brows financially.

-          More big sides in league.

-          Celtic and Rangers get more big teams to play without leaving Scottish League.

-          If Celtic and Rangers left the Scottish League, the Scottish League would collapse in terms of status, attendances and TV money. The top divisions would go mostly part time.

-          So you get to have more big sides to play without destroying the Scottish national identity of having a strong professional top league.

-          Chance to increase TV revenue, market and sponsorship.

-          The likes of Aberdeen, Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Dundee United would be able to grow so challenge for the league.

-          More English people would pay attention to Scottish Soccer.

Reply to Critics of idea

-          English Winning the Scottish Leagues and trophies.

Well that would be annoying, but Scottish sides would still dominate the history of the trophy. It would take a century for the North East England clubs to catch up with the Scottish Old Firm.

Scottish sides not in Europe so often.

But as Scottish sides would be richer, they would do better in the timesd they qualifided for Europe.

England would lose some big clubs from their league.

But it would make little difference to the size of English football. As England is such a big country.

Why do you support English clubs joining the Scottish League but against Scottish sides joining the English League?

Because if the biggest sides left the Scottish League, it would destroy the status of the Scottish League, and would make people think Scotland is part of England. It would not be the case the other way around.

Why do you not support a British League?

Because if we merged the leagues, all English Leagues in history would be counted as the forerunner to the British League. And all Scottish Leagues would be labelled as the status of a non league trophy.

So all Scottish sides would be starting on the basis where they are listed as having no national trophies, while all the English teams would be starting with all the titles and cups they have won in the English League.

Plus Scottish teams might go decades without winning trophies or qualifying for Europe.

Plus only 6 Scottish sides are big enough to realistically spend long consistent periods in the top two tiers of a British League.  And there would only be another 10 sides big enough to qualify for the top 4 tiers of a British League.

Why would you want to 3 smaller English Northern sides to join the league?

I think it would be good to have sides who could play more local derbies against the 3 big English North East sides. It would increase English interest in the Scottish League and would mean that there would be sides from England, that smaller Scottish sides could compete against.

Imagine the games

Glasgow Celtic V Sunderland.

Newcastle United v Aberdeen.

Glasgow Rangers V Middlesbrough.

Gateshead v Hibernian.

Hartlepool United V Dundee United.

Carlisle United V Heart of Midlothian.  

The top 3 North east England sides would start in the premier.

The other 3 sides would start in tier 2.



If this idea is too ambitious how about inviting big English Northern sides into the Scottish League Cup.